City Council Rubber Stamps Parking Meter Deal Changes

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jun 5, 2013 9:00PM

Photo credit: Moe Martinez

Aldermen held their noses and approved Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s changes to the noxious 2008 parking meter privatization deal during Wednesday’s City Council meeting. First, though, let’s thank the 11 aldermen who voted no to the deal: Bob Fioretti (2nd); Leslie Hairston (5th); Scott Waguespack (32nd); Rey Colon (34th); Brendan Reilly (42nd); Michele Smith (43rd); Tom Tunney (44th); John Arena (45th); Ameya Pawar (47th); Harry Osterman (48th); and Debra Silverstein (50th).

To be fair, the debate on the changes, according to the Sun-Times, was lengthy, spirited and lasted around 90 minutes, which is 89 minutes and 30 seconds longer than when the deal originally passed. Fioretti asked if his fellow aldermen “learn anything” from 2008 and warned that approving the changes could be the “last nail in the coffin for any flexibility we might have” to wriggle free of the deal we’ve repeatedly compared to a persistent case of herpes.

Aldermen who voted yes praised Emanuel’s leadership for at least trying to make the deal more palatable for taxpayers. Ald. Dick Mell (33rd) thanked Emanuel for “opening up the wound and cauterizing it.” Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) must have been listening to the Black Eyed Peas before the vote, because he said Emanuel deserved a “mazel tov” because he made Chicago Parking Meters LLC change “a deal that was already set in stone.”

“You made them give us back some money,” Burnett said.

As we and others have noted numerous times, CPM will most likely make more money in the remaining 71 years of the deal with the changes. The Reader’s Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky have been banging the drum for months on the cross purposes of Emanuel claiming to fight against the deal publicly while the City Law Department fought in the courts to keep the deal in place.

The argument they made in favor of the deal was so forceful it might as well have been written by CPM's lawyers themselves. As a matter of fact, CPM's position was almost exactly the same: "The Agreement has materially improved public use and enjoyment of the System."

The parking meter company was represented by lawyers from Winston & Strawn, a well-connected firm whose partners include former Governor James Thompson and former U.S. attorney Dan Webb. Two of the three attorneys who worked to fend off the parking meter lawsuit were contributors to Emanuel's mayoral campaign.

And so the city effectively teamed up with Winston & Strawn to undermine Krislov's lawsuit. By arguing that there are good reasons the deal should stay in place, Mayor Emanuel gave up the city's leverage with the parking meter company.

Suddenly Fioretti’s warnings seem even more ominous. As Waguespack said via Twitter:

Not all business at today's Council meeting centered around the parking meter deal. Aldermen approved a measure increasing the number of night games at Wrigley Field to 40. Emanuel's fine hikes for motorists involved in "doorings" and bicyclists who break traffic laws also passed. (John Kass must be sitting in his office penning another "little bike people" column right now.) And the "Keep Chicago Renting" ordinance passed by a 45-4 vote. The ordinance provides protections to law-abiding renters living in foreclosed properties.